224 Linnaan Society. 



The author states that he is indebted to the late Dr. Charles Lush, 

 F.L.S., Superintendent of the Honourable East India Company's 

 Botanical Gardens at Darpoorie, who in 1842, from the sketches and 

 specimens then in the author's possession, identified the plant as the 

 Amyris Kataf of Forskahl, and assisted in identifying the gum with 

 the Bdellium of the ancients. He believes that if at all known to 

 Roxburgh, it must be under the names of Amyris nana or of Bos- 

 wellia. 



The paper concluded with a description of the plant, and with 

 some remarks on the geological character of the localities in which 

 it is found ; and was accompanied by a sketch of a branch, and by 

 specimens of the gum in its pure and mixed states. 



May 6. — R. Brown, Esq., President, in the Chair. 



Read some " Notes on the Leaf of Guarea grandifolia, Dec." By 

 R. C. Alexander, Esq., M.D., F.L.S., as follows: — 



In the enclosed specimens of a Guarea from Jamaica, the G. gran- 

 difolia, Dec, it will be seen that the lower leaflets have fallen off, 

 while younger ones are being developed at the extremity of the 

 same petiole. At the time of flowering, the number of leaflets varies 

 from a single pair to eight or ten pairs ; but as these fall off" in the 

 course of a few months, the petiole elongates, and at each successive 

 rainy season, of which there are two in the year, throws out from 

 the end a fresh foliage of several pairs. The lower and older part 

 of the petiole in the meantime remaining attached to the stem, be- 

 comes completely ligneous and round, and acquires a rind distinct 

 from the wood, and covered with lenticelles and a resemblance to 

 pith in the centre; — takes on, in short, the character of a branch, 

 from which it is only to be distinguished by the axillary inflorescence, 

 the absence of buds in the axillae of the leaflets, and the analogy with 

 the closely-allied genus Trichilia, in which the same phsenomenon is 

 seen in leaves deciduous after the second development. In Guarea, 

 at least in this species of it, the leaf seems to be continuous with 

 the branch, without articulation, and to have no definite term of life, 

 hanging on till overtopped and killed by other leaves. Its usual 

 length at that period is from a yard to four and a half feet. 



In Adrien de Jussieu's Memoir on the Meliacea are the following 

 remarks : — 



" The resemblance of the leaflets borne on the same petiole to 

 leaves borne on the same branch becomes more striking still in cer- 

 tain genera, as Guarea, where the extremity of the petiole, after a 

 series of leaflets perfectly developed, presents some which are not 

 yet so, and which appear to belong to another shoot. It would be 

 interesting to ascertain what becomes of them, a thing that I have 

 not been able to do, having had none but dried specimens to 

 examine." 



This shrub usually grows at the base of large timber trees, such as 

 the Eriodendron anfractuosum, in the pasture districts of St. Ann's 

 parish, establishing itself between their elevated buttress-like roots, 

 and with its leaves hanging down to the grass, forms natural arbours, 

 or rather stables, in which the cattle repose during the heat of the 



